Roskilde Music Festival
| Roskilde Festival | |
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| Genre | Rock, pop, electronic, reggae, hip hop, world |
| Dates | Four days, starting from first Thursday in July, or last Thursday in June with a 4-day warm-up |
| Location(s) | Roskilde, Denmark |
| Years active | 1971–present |
| Founded by | Mogens Sandfær, Jesper Switzer Møller (at that time Magnussen), and promotor Carl Fischer |
| Website | |
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The Roskilde Festival is a Danish music festival held annually south of Roskilde. It is one of the largest music festivals in Europe and the largest in Northern Europe. It was created in 1971 by two high school students, Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller, and promoter Carl Fischer. In 1972, the festival was taken over by the Roskilde Foundation, which has since run the festival as a non-profit organization for development and support of music, culture and humanism. In 2014, the Roskilde Foundation provided festival participants with the opportunity to nominate and vote upon which organizations should receive funds raised by the festival.
The Roskilde Festival was Denmark's first music-oriented festival created for hippies, and today covers more of the mainstream youth from Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. The Roskilde Festival 2013 had more than 180 performing bands and was attended by some 130,000 festivalgoers, along with more than 21,000 volunteers, 5,000 media people and 3,000 artists – totaling almost 160,000 people who participated in the festival.
Until the mid-1990s, the festival attracted mostly Scandinavians, but in recent years it has become more and more international (with an especially large influx of Germans, Australians and British).
The first Roskilde Festival was held on August 28 and 29, 1971, originally named the Sound Festival. It was inspired by festivals and youth gatherings like Newport, Isle of Wight and . It was characterized mainly by poor management but also great enthusiasm. The festival's inaugural year saw roughly 20 bands ranging from folk, jazz, rock and pop genres all playing on a single stage, which lasted for two days with approximately some 10,000 visitors per day.
In 1978, festival organizers acquired the Canopy Scene, an orange musical stage previously used by The Rolling Stones on a European tour. Since its beginning, the Canopy Scene and its characteristic arches have become a well-known symbol and logo representing the festival.
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